Dean's remnants drench Mexico

Posted: Friday, August 24, 2007

POZA RICA, Mexico - The remnants of Hurricane Dean dumped heavy rain across central Mexico on Thursday, drenching mudslide-prone mountains as it pushed inland after slamming into the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm and killing four people.

Neighbors banded together to clear fallen trees with axes and machetes from the streets of this storm-lashed city, while workers began reconnecting downed power lines.

Mexican officials said Thursday that four people died after the storm struck the central Mexican coast. In Veracruz state, a man drowned trying to cross a swollen river and another was crushed to death by a rain-soaked wall. In neighboring Hidalgo state, a woman and her 14-year-old son were killed when their shack collapsed on them in a mountain village.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami downgraded Dean to a tropical depression late Wednesday but was keeping close watch Thursday to see whether it would re-form over the Pacific Ocean. With up to 20 inches of rain expected, authorities worried there could still be floods or mudslides.

Dean's remnants moved out over the Pacific Ocean near Manzanillo. Even if the system does slowly regain tropical storm force, forecasters would give it another name because Dean weakened below tropical cyclone status over Mexico's mountains.

The mountain ranges near Mexico's coast are dotted with villages connected by precarious roads and susceptible to disaster. A rainstorm in 1999 caused floods that killed at least 350 people.

Dean slammed into Mexico for the second time in as many days Wednesday with top sustained winds of 100 mph. Its center hit the tourism and fishing town of Tecolutla. The wide storm's hurricane-force winds lashed at a 60-mile stretch of the Mexican coast in Veracruz state.

"There's been a tremendous amount of damage across the state," Veracruz Gov. Fidel Herrera told the Televisa television network. In the vanilla-harvest heartland of Papantla, "a huge number of roofs were ripped off houses," he said.